Jimi Hendrix

More than forty years after his death, Jimi Hendrix, recently named the greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, continues to inspire fans. Many have written about Hendrix's life and music, but this book provides a revealing and unprecedented look at this visionary icon: an intimate biography written by Jimi's younger brother, Leon. Leon Hendrix takes us back to the days before Jimi's amazing rise to fame, beginning with their tough childhood in Seattle, when their fascination with science fiction and UFOs helped them escape a difficult family life. (Jimi insisted his family call him "Buster," after Flash Gordon actor Buster Crabbe.) The author reveals Jimi's early fascination with sound, from his experiments with plucking wires attached to bedposts to the time when he got in trouble for taking apart the family radio ("I was looking for the music," he explained) to Jimi's purchasing his first guitar, a Sears, Roebuck and Co. acoustic, from a neighbor. Leon recounts Jimi's early days performing on the "Chitlin' Circuit," when Jimi would call from the road to play early versions of tracks for the classic album Are You Experienced, and illuminates the biographical roots of Jimi's most well-known songs. The book also tells about the heady days of sex and drugs that came with Jimi's skyrocketing fame and how Leon felt Jimi's management isolated him from the rest of the family. The author speaks of his own heartbreak, learning of his brother's sudden death while incarcerated in Washington State's Monroe Reformatory. Commemorating what would have been Jimi's seventieth birthday, Leon Hendrix's poignant and captivating account sheds new light on a music legend.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.